Monday, June 8, 2009

The Berg in Ashes

Kreisberg was never buried in Wichita. There was a service in the local Unitarian Church, then his ashes were scattered.
This is according to his brother Roderick, aka Guen. I found him serving an internship in Gastroentology and Hepatology at the University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore County.
There is a Robin Kreisberg award in Wichita for budding radio announcers. It's given out there, though there is both a Robin Kreisberg award or scholarship at Wilson HS as well, and a memorial tree in Lafayette Park in Chevy Chase.
Still thinking of going out to KC to interview my Catholic-radical guru, Charles Carney, who recently got a 12-month suspended sentence and a $500 fine for his protest activities around the School of the Americas.
For anyone who doesn't know what this is, it has been called the "School for Torture," at the Ft. Benning Army Base in Georgia. It's official aim is (or was) to teach Latin American dictatorships how to be democratic. That was the official line. Lefties accused it of actually teaching new methods of torture to use against Communist and Socialist (and maybe Populist) opposition members.
Charles set up my PLM year in Detroit, as well as programs in Chicago and Cincinnati.
He is hardcore in a pleasant way, never blowing his own horn. His wife does not believe in private property (property is theft, remember?). Hopefully I can get him some ink in Commonweal or America or the other Catholic lefty mags. Still hope to make it out there and then to Wichita, where hopefully some of his collegues remember him.
Guen cautioned, though, that many members of the radio industry move around a lot, so we will see.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

I'm So Not There

Apparently the word's gotten around that I'm not at Beachweek this summer. An from what I've read, it's just not the same.
The Baltimore Sun ran a series of interviews with local teens. Almost to a man (or chick) they said some variation of the below:
"All our lives we hear about Beachweek, both the person and the event. Well now we're finally here, but where is the legendary Beachweek?" A tear rolled slowly down her face.
The answer is I'm keeping a low profile because of some ridiculous statutory-rape charge last summer. Like that little fourteen-year-old minx didn't totally want it!
It has been quite the difference between years past, when youth far and wide gathered round myself on the beach late at night to hear tales of Beachweek past.
I played Plato to the various Phadreus' arrayed around the sand fire. "Tell us about Beachweek before 21 (year-old drinking age)," they would invariably beg.
"Many butt-head moons ago," I would tell them, "Beachweek was far more adored by the partying Gods than now."
But there were always a few wiseacres who called me "old man," and did not respect the ultimate in sacrifices I made for the nation's youth: without when,then: a case of Milwaukee's Best.
My various acolytes would always mysteriously vanish when the liquor stores closed. Occasionally I would find myself in a very cozy sleeping bag, if you understand my meaning, but more often I slept like a wolf in the dunes. I would greet the new day's dawn with a freshly cracked Best.
Shaking the sand from my hair, I would raise one to the new day. "Hey bud," I said to the rising sun, "let's Beachweek."

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

GM Sold for Scrap

It was the one symbol left that Detroit Still Mattered. The GM sign on the circular 70-story-plus central building of the Renaissance Center. Though the RenCen got a lot of criticism for its fortress architecture, that sign and building could be seen for miles across the city's low-rise and often decaying landscape.

The RenCen was finally remodeled to make it a little more pedestrian-friendly from its surrounding streetscape. If you know nothing of the center, it was Fort Whitey to the extreme. Seven towers placed on a parking garage and an interior bomb-shelter-like superstructure that contained an inscrutibly laid-out shopping mall.

The whole structure was placed right on the Detroit River, and could be driven into directly from a freeway. Where it faced the city, in one direction only, there was what was called an "air-conditioning berm" that made it almost impossible to get to from the street. It looked for all the world like a deliberately-placed high fortress wall. The whole thing connected to Detroit's bizarre People-Mover, the fully automated and often empty monorail that loops around the city's often deserted downtown.

(When my younger brother first took a look at the place, he went into a tour-guide voice and said "this was built in the 1970s to repel the invading Negroes.")

The berm came down, and GM moved to the place from their former Midtown offices. If you've ever seen "Roger and Me" by Michael Moore, you could see that the former headquarters of the world's largest auto company was located in a collection of odd, musty, and completely unimpressive 1920s buildings.

Love it or hate it, the RenCen's bulk does make an impression of power. That's why the TV cameras all focused on it while the company was going down the tubes. It could end up just like the rest of Detroit: disposible, throwaway, outdated. This has become the way we treat older cities now. As the Onion wrote: "Detroit Sold For Scrap."

Monday, June 1, 2009

The Tyranny of Equality

Two pieces on my Yahoo! news service. First one: "Best Hairstyles to Fit Your Face." Second, and underneath it: "Air France Jet Carrying 228 Feared Lost."

There is obviously something very very wrong with the way the internet presents news, and the example above is probably one of the worst. Some newspapers are trying to present a layout like a newspaper, with larger type and bigger presentation to the important instead of the trivial (yes, unless you are a mid-1960s Beatle your hairstyle is trivial).

Believe it or not, there is still power in a headline. When I went to the Newseam in DC they featured the headlines of leading papers after 9/11. When Obama won the presidency, newspapers sold out, because the everyone knew the headlines were history.

By the way, the New York Times.1) AMERICA ATTACKED. 2) OBAMA

The Great Pizza War

It started over a piece of pizza and ended with people screaming at each other so loudly that the staff had to come over to ask them to calm down.

This was with my friend Allan, a brilliant physicist who has remained close to his working class Glasgow roots. He knows on a first-name basis all the campus police and staff, the people everyone else largely ignores.

We were awaiting the return of family friends, the Brumbaughs, to return to the class of 59 tent. A female friend Allan had once met on a dating web site was hungry and wanted a slice of pizza. She had no arm band to get her in and out, though she had somehow gotten in and didn't want to risk being kept out next time.

Govinda, Allan's girlfriend, had come down from New York, and nicely went out to get a slice from a place almost right outside. Allan explodes at the other girl, who is with a date. The date leaves and hides or something.

Meanwhile, the entire party, there by a tent offering unlimited beer as long as you want, breaks up and leaves after taking sides on who should have gotten the pizza. There were fireworks (real ones) briefly later, but the night had been ruined. Over pizza. In New Jersey.

Even the Golden Ones

In the movies an acceptance to Princeton is like being conferred knighthood. For the rest of your life, you will be above the common serfs, and you will now cruise through life utterly untroubled, with every golden door held open just for you.

I picked up a slim booklet on a table after a party. The next group to use the space was the class of 1984, for a memorial service. 29 members of that class and the others near it were now dead.

There has been no major war since the now departed were 22 years-old. Just life's ordinary casualties. Though you wouldn't know it from TV, not everyone makes it to their 70s.

It reminded me of when Alison Fraker, the most beautiful girl in my high school class, died in a car accident while still in college. An earthly angel had somehow departed. Beauty is fragile, though we connote it with strength of character and will and even with immortality. Think of JFK Jr. or Princess Diana.

So are the deaths of these people, the supposedly best and the brightest, more tragic than that of inner-city teenagers? More than 30 died in just the last school year in Chicago. The common refrain that was doubtlessly said of the Princetonians was that "they had so much to live for."

I learned from the booklet that there is now a class of 1984 stone placed on Nassau Hall, the 1755 main building of campus. Ashes to ashes, dust to stone.

TIger Anthropology

Now I know why they call it "The Orange Dome." The Princeton campus is so self-contained that the rest of the world just drops away when you are there, especially at night. You walk through endless courtyards, walkways, and arches and really never have to leave for much. It's like an academic theme-park that seems to go on forever.

I had this ridiculous spangled wrist-band that let me into any reunion. The reunions take place inside these hastily-assembled fenced-in areas that make the campus look like Fort Ticonderoga. They are divided by year or years of graduations. You are supposed to come back every five years or so.

First, with my young friend and former Evelyn Place roomer Christian (Princeton 03)as a guide, we tried the 20th, since my one Princeton townie friend to go to the university was in that class. No luck among the returnees, half of whom looked as though they had dropped tousle-haired off a sailboat in a Land's End catalog.

Then to the 25th, which had terrible music, but through Christian I met a fascinating girl from New Orleans (too bad she was there with her boyfriend). I stayed, shouting fruitlessly into my cell to try to connect with a friend on staff at the Physics Department. All I got as a response was, not surprisingly, music and crowd noise from somewhere. The next day I found him and the Great Pizza War commenced(more on that later).

Went briefly to try to find Christian among the youngsters at the 5th and 10th reunion. No luck, but a great band with four black female singers and seemingly 10 musicians of various stripes. I was reminded of how much I miss good live music since I don't go into Philly or NY much anymore.

Since I never feel the compulsion to stay out till very late much anymore, I left and hobbled on home.

A Reunion Blur Remembered

The euro-tunes blasting from the DJ booth were wretched. This was inside the Princeton class of 1984's 25th reunion tent on the campus. The songs made me remember why I hated the soulless, powerless and emotionless techno-boing boing music of that era. How I turned to 1960s rock for something that sounded real.

Suddenly clean, simple guitar chords cut through everything else, and the Ramones started singing "I Wanna Be Sedated." I was immediately brought back to the thrill of first hearing this song back in high school, it's three-chord power, drive, and joy. I even started dancing on my still half-broken ankle. So did everyone else.

Just like then, the Ramones rocked.

Someday You Will Ache Like I Ache

Salt my tears and salt my wounds
I think that I can fly
and though it's not worth remembering
I'd rather forget why

"June," by Will Croxton